Watson Kirkconnell – författare

This Miltonic reference works is the third and final volume in a trilogy dealing with Miltonic analogues. It complements the author's previous compendia of analogues, The Celestial Cycle (on Paradise Lost) and That Invincible Samson (on Samson Agonistes).Thirty-seven years of research in the libraries of the world have unearthed on impressive array of analogues of Comus, Lycidas, and Paradise Regained; and the more important of these are now made available in Kirkconnell's English translation in Awake the Courteous Echo. The book includes 39 analogues of Comus, 102 of Lycidas, and 25 of Paradise Regained. These analogues range from the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh to those of Milton's contemporaries. Dr. Kirkconnell's initial concern is not with source hunting, but with analogues as analogues, the Jonsonian masque, the pastoral elegy, and the brief epic. The subtlety, complexity, and powerful originality of Milton's art are here for the reader to enjoy.The major analogues in languages other than English are translated in both verse and prose. Both specialists and students of Milton will find this a fascinating and valuable study.

This work examines the more than one hundred analogues of Samson Agonistes, about half of them written earlier than Milton's drama. The author has gone back in every instance to primary sources, and examined all treatments of Milton's theme, in all languages, for their intrinsic interest and merit. While he has not entirely omitted a discussion of source relationships, his concern here has been chiefly with analogues.In Part I of the book the author compares five pre-Miltonic works, which he has translated, in whole or in part, from the original Latin, Dutch, and Italian. In Part II, a descriptive catalogue, he comments on the significance, to Miltonists and to the general reader, of the analogues. He traces the purposes beyond mere theatre in the different versions of the play: versions prior to 1670 contain many overtones of personal, national, or theological significance, while, after 1671, there is a rapid shift away from religious or moral presentation to a more strictly theatrical entertainment. Dr. Kirkconnell believes that this shift in interest has obscured from most of the critics of later centuries the tone and tradition of this great drama. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen dozens of versions of the old play theme, nearly all of them wholly disregarding any inner drama of the spirit, and stressing extrovert aspects of Strength, Beauty, and Sex. As a whole, the analogues will reveal the variety that playwrights have found possible in the ancient theme. The author concludes that Milton's treatment is the noblest ever written, surpassing all others in literary quality and in the nature of the dramatic conflict it describes.

An anthology of translated analogues, in whole or in part, on the theme of paradise lost. The collection is divided into two parts. Part one is the analogues and part two is a descriptive catalogue of all the analogues the author consulted. The book also includes a preface and lengthy introduction. It is an indispensable resource for any serious student or scholar of Milton's Paradise Lost.

An all-inclusive edition of the poetry of Watson Kirkonnell would run to some ten large volumes of original verse and translations. His original verse would fill two volumes the size of this one, and his translated verse—from Icelandic, Italian, Dutch, French, Magyar, Latin, Ukrainian and Polish—would fill 5,000 pages. No poet in the English-speaking tradition is more deeply grounded in world literature.The original poetry of Watson Kirkconnell has been primarily narrative in character: first, the twelve philosophically slanted books of his Spenserian epic, The Eternal Quest; then the seventeen vivid narratives in The Flying Bull, and Other Tales, a sort of Western echo of The Canterbury Tales; and finally the thirty narrative poems of his new Centennial Tales, many of which were written in 1964. These are framed about the history of Canada, and are written in honour of the nation's Centennial in 1967. They range from the coming of the first "Amerindians" from Asia about 30,000 B.C. to a possible atomic holocaust in A.D. 2000, and include poems on the Quebec Conference of 1864, the Vimy Memorial, the Italian Campaign and the Canadians in Cyprus.This volume also contains some lyrics from Dr. Kirkconnell's light opera, The Mod at Grand Pré, and the whole of his Greek-style drama, Let My People Go, with its setting in Egypt just before the Exodus and its issues in the present. The original poetry has been arranged in roughly the reverse of chronological order, while the translations are arranged according to the dates of publication.